Pastoral Medicine

Pastoral Medicine: Lecture 7

Schmidt Number: S-5928

On-line since: 27th March, 2008

LECTURE 7

Dear friends,

If one had no other means of investigation
than that provided by modern science, one
would never attain an understanding of the human being. Certainly it
is not my wish to belittle the accomplishments of this science in its
own areas, for as far as its methods allow it to go, it brilliantly
explores whatever can have the slightest relevance to it. But one
cannot reach the human being by this means, because in human life in
its present form, physical-etheric body and soul-and-spirit are
interwoven. Present earth processes reach into the physical-etheric
body from every direction. With modern science we follow these
physical-chemical processes of outer nature, that is, of nature
outside the human being. Comparatively speaking, this science is good
for the world outside us. People have simply accepted the idea that
just as these chemical processes occur in a physics or chemistry
laboratory, or in some piece of the world that we are able to observe
as our immediate environment, so approximately they are also then
continued within the human being. For instance, combustion is
described as the combining of some substance or other with oxygen;
then the thoughts about this are continued unchanged when speaking of
the process within the human body, and combustion is still described
as happening the same way within us. But one should know that this is
not possible. For the process in a human being that is analogous to
combustion is related to external combustion precisely as something
living is related to something dead. Combustion in the external world
is inorganic, lifeless, while within a human being we have a
combustion that has become living. This fact is important for all of
science. External combustion, so far as the substance it affects is
concerned, is definitely subject to conditions of warmth. According
to science, there is a definite so-called flash point, and the heat
of combustion always relates to this external condition. This does
not continue in the same way within the human organism. Externally,
given a certain temperature, any substance can combine with oxygen
and produce combustion. Within the human being the same temperature
is not needed for that to happen; other laws prevail. This is
important for external science, because external science sets up
hypotheses that appear to be perfectly plausible. Earlier conditions
are assumed from the conditions that now exist on the earth. Preyer,
the famous Jena physiologist,
[Note 8]
has done just that. He found
the ordinary Kant-Laplace theory too stupid, so he went back to
certain dynamic fire processes from which evolution was supposed to
have originated. He also took it for granted that these must have
happened at temperatures that today are necessary for similar fire
processes to happen. That was not necessarily so. One can of course
go in thought from the inorganic fire processes of this present age
to similar processes in this age in the human organism, although
actually these latter happen at an essentially lower temperature. But
on this basis, even for a hypothetical view of original earth
conditions, one would get quite different results.

You can see that the ideas
that become fashionable are particularly important when one wants to
acquire a comprehensive picture of the world. In short, with the
means that modern science provides it is not possible to gain an
understanding of the external world, either in its evolution or in
its present state. Naturally this causes difficulties if a certain
attitude prevails.

I can speak of these
difficulties because I myself have experienced them with particular
intensity. Truly, through my whole life there has been one foremost
characteristic — you will find it mentioned in my autobiography.
[Note 9]
I can only describe it as the greatest possible respect for modern
natural science. My respect has never changed. Never at any time
would I have criticized in a trivial sense — which would be so
easy to do — what natural science was bringing forward, whether
in the field of external chemical, of mechanical or physical
research, or of medicine. And yet at the same time evolution stood
there before my eyes as a spiritual vision. And the need arose to
bring what was opening up for me spiritually — for instance,
the Atlantean time, or the Lemurian time, or something still further
back, or further forward — to bring that into harmony with what
natural science was giving out. This has not been too difficult with
what natural science says about the immediate present. But when it
begins to exceed its bounds, to “go wild,” when it
advances hypotheses that reach from the present age to a time lying
far in the past, we encounter the most severe conflicts if we want to
bring what we have seen spiritually into harmony with what science is
saying. We come into conflict with science just when we would like to
be in accord with it. Spiritual science would never choose to be in
disagreement with natural science. For surely one would not be so
unintelligent as to oppose facts! All the more, then, one comes into
conflict with opinions. As long as natural researchers talk, that is
good. As soon as they begin writing, they really “go
wild,” and then one can no longer go along with what they say.
This is a serious situation, and it must be reckoned with by anyone
who has to relate in any way to what modern science is able to
give.

Natural science simply
does not reach as far as the human being. Human beings have a soul
nature and a spiritual nature, and do not have just a physical
organism with physical processes that can be investigated externally
— even to such phenomena as those of aerodynamics or
thermodynamics. We also have living in us our karma from earlier
earth-lives; we see it manifesting in our personality. We found this
plainly evident in such a person as Ferdinand Raimund. But there is
no possibility of exploring such connections if we only have the
means of modern science at our disposal.

We must indeed advance
to a new level. We must begin from the side of spiritual science to
look at what manifests as external human processes and relate them to
what we see as spiritual processes. We will be going in the right
direction, for instance, if, holding fast to the physiology of
breathing and circulation as we already know it from current natural
science, we proceed further to examine how physical life is connected
with spiritual life.

Let us look at human
inhalation. It consists of our taking in external gaseous substance.
But this is not just a passive happening, something being taken in by
a human being in a completed condition and elaborated within. It is
not just changing over from one process, inhalation, to another
process, exhalation — from the inhaling of oxygen to the
forming of carbon dioxide. The inhalation process shows itself in
reality to be continuously creating the human being, working
continuously to build the human being, from without inwards. In the
inhalation process we find there is a constant building up,
proceeding inward from the cosmos. Human beings do not merely inhale
amorphous oxygen. In the oxygen that we regard, mistakenly, simply as
a gaseous substance we inhale formative forces appropriate to our own
being. If sometimes we have shortness of breath, some alien elemental
is lying across the path of our breathing. That occurs in abnormal
breathing. But in normal breathing, there is always a human being
coming into being. Continuously a human birth is occurring out of the
macrocosm; an air-human is being born into the human. The entire
process is an activity of the astral body. We must picture it in this
way: We inhale. The inhaling is activated by the astral body. The
entire process is a continuous being-born. It takes place in the
element of air, in everything that is air within us. We have a
perpetual human birth in the element of air in the inhalation
process.

But now we also
breathe out. We breathe out carbon dioxide. At the conclusion of
other organic processes carbon dioxide is, in a certain sense,
collected for outbreathing. That too is commonly presented as a kind
of passive reaction, or something similar. People simply do the
research they are able to do in this field with physical means, and
they don't arrive at a clear conception. Now the exhalation also is
activated. It is not just some passive human process. There is
activity in it: activity of the etheric body. The entire process
occurs in the fluid element, the element that in earlier times was
called water, when everything that was fluid was called water. We can
continue to use the expression. This process takes place in the
element of water.

Now there should come
an important question: how is it during sleep? In sleep the etheric
body is first and foremost within the human organism; therefore for
exhalation there is no problem. But how can we inhale during sleep if
the astral body is outside? Well, the fact is that during sleep
actually only the microcosmic part of the astral body goes out of the
physical organism; the macrocosmic astrality is all the more active
at that time. All the astrality of the macrocosm enters during sleep.
Our breathing activity during sleep is for this reason very different
from our breathing activity while awake, because it is regulated by
the activity of the macrocosm. So there is an essential difference
between inhalation while awake and inhalation while asleep. The
control of our inhalation during sleep comes from outside. When we
are awake we control our inhalation ourselves through our astral
body, from within outwards. While we are asleep the cosmic astrality
enters our organism to do this for us. Here you have an important
clue by which to approach questions of pathology. The cosmos has this
remarkable attribute. You find that it holds a healthy relation to
earth conditions if you go far enough above the earth. Close to the
earth there are all kinds of influences through climate and other
circumstances that can make the cosmic astrality abnormal. Similarly,
through other processes that we have yet to learn about, the inner
astrality of the human being can become abnormal. There we have the
source of a certain kind of pathological condition, but the source is
within, in soul and spirit. That is an essential fact.

Now let us go further.
The breathing process is comparatively coarse. We breathe gaseous
substance in and we breathe gaseous substance out. The whole process
is coarse as compared to all the other processes that occur in us as
well as in the macrocosm — for instance, those that have to do
with the fluctuation of heat, with the element of warmth inside and
outside the human being. There are differentiations of warmth inside
the human being and differentiations outside the human being. We can
think away air, water, earth, and hold before us only these
differences in warmth. To physicists this makes no sense, because
they regard warmth only as a condition of a material substance. But
spiritual science knows that in warmth one has to do with a separate
element. We can speak of warmth as an independent active element. Now
fundamental to our entire human life there is a receptive process
that is finer than the breathing process. It is the warmth process.
When we examine the human lung region, when we study the organization
of the lungs, we are looking at the coarse breathing process in the
element of air. But when we come up higher to the region centered
primarily in the head (although it is present to a smaller degree in
the entire human organism), we come to a finer breathing process that
occurs not in the element of air but in the element of warmth.
Therefore we can say: higher up, we come to a finer process
consisting of an extraordinarily fine reception of warmth from the
macrocosm, breathing-in of warmth and breathing-out of warmth. But
now this is what we must see: in the coarse inhalation-exhalation of
the lungs, the human being is participating in an active exchange
with the outer world: breathing in, breathing out, breathing in,
breathing out, in, out, in, out. The process I am now describing is
not like that. There is indeed an “in,” but there is not
an “out” in the same sense as in ordinary breathing. In
this warmth-breathing the exhalation actually takes place within the
human being; it is an inner process. What is exhaled by the
nerve-sense system becomes united with what is being inhaled by the
lungs. Thus the nerve-sense system carries on a very fine breathing
process of which the inhalation is indeed a taking-in from outside,
but what is taken in is not released again to the outside. It is
given over to the coarser breathing process of the lungs, to the air
inhalation, and is then by way of that air inhalation carried farther
into the organism.

We can perceive the
following process: The cosmic warmth enters the human organism by way
of breathing. But not only warmth. The warmth carries with it light,
macrocosmic chemism, and macrocosmic life, vitality. Light ether,
chemical ether, and life ether from the macrocosm are carried by the
inhalation of warmth into the human organism. The element of warmth
carries light, as well as the chemical and life elements, into the
human being, and gives them over to the air-inhalation process. This
entire process, which lies over the air-breathing process and which
appears as a refined (or even metamorphosed) breathing process, is
not studied today in a real sense. It is lacking entirely from
physiology — well, a bit of it falls into physiology and works
there as a foreign body. This is an example of how one gets nowhere
if one works separately from the spirit on one side and from nature
on the other. It is something entirely foreign to the physiology of
the senses as the latter is commonly presented, with the various
senses — seeing, hearing, sensation of warmth — totally
differentiated. In reality, they are only the limbs, the outer shoots
of this other process that, to begin with, is the taking-in of warmth
and with it light; chemism, and life. This is different from the
sense process. As it is now, people know only the peripheral aspects
of the sense process, not this central activity; that's why the
current physiology of the senses is like a completely foreign body to
them. Physiologists dabble around in the separate senses and treat
them in a dilettantish fashion. And they pile hypothesis upon
hypothesis. Of course this is bound to happen because they are
looking at the single, separate processes of seeing, hearing, and so
forth, and are completely missing the fact that all the senses flow
in together, stream in together into the human being. No one sees
that all this flows in, is taken in together with the taking in of
warmth and the light, chemism, and life that warmth carries in with
it from the macrocosm. Only after that does one come to the breathing
of the lungs.

There will only be a
real physiology of the senses when the physiologist is able to say: I
follow the physical, physiological processes of the eye to the nerve,
which then carries the process inward; I come gradually to the path
of the breathing, out of the paths of the senses and thinking to the
breathing. Then it will be understood how yoga could come about in
earth-life: that is, by disregarding the sense life that takes its
course at the periphery. In the practice of yoga, activity goes
entirely into a conscious inhalation process; what lies behind it,
namely, sense perception, is made the object of consciousness through
the breathing activity. You see, in earlier world conceptions, such
things were known and put into practice instinctively. But modern
science will surely encounter riddles everywhere, because it is not
able to see facts and make the connection between them. It observes
eye and ear; then it begins to speculate wildly about what happens
inside. And if it notices that the hypothesis it attempts as it
follows eye and ear inward leads to a blind alley — because it
will not accept as fact the finer breathing process that I have
presented — then it says, “Why, of course, what goes on
inside is simply paralleling what goes on outside.” Parallelism
— the processes occur at the same time! Well, that's a very
convenient way out!

This should provide
firm ground for both priest and physician in connection with
contemporary knowledge, for they will no longer have to reject this
knowledge. The physiology of the senses has gathered tremendous
treasures from all sides, but it is like a man who has collected the
most excellent building materials for a beautiful house and carries
them to a place and arrange them in an enormous pile, but then he
can't build the house. He can't possibly build the house. Everything
that occurs in the senses has been gathered together and arranged in
a great pile, but no work starts. To start the work, what goes on
inside the human being has to be added to what has already been
researched externally. Inquiry must be made into the process of the
finer breathing that takes place in the etheric and astral bodies.
From there one can go on to build the house. Naturally, when the
house can be built one would be a fool to say: The first thing we
have to do is to get rid of this great pile of building materials
lying here. We will certainly not say that. Now that it is all there,
we can begin to build the house.

It would be just as
foolish to do what many people do today who look at things in a
dilettantish way — that is, criticize natural science from the
ground up and reject it. It does not have to be rejected. Every piece
of the building material can be used, it is all valuable, and there
will be a fine result if all that is given out today by the
physiology of the senses is used. But as it is now, it is just a pile
of material. So we can say: We extend our view from what takes place
in ordinary breathing as the continuous creation of present-day human
beings to the finer breathing process that takes place higher up in
the element of warmth, into which the entire cosmic etheric world
plays. That is what we see if we study the upper human being.

But we can also look
below in the air-breathing and study the lower human being. Then,
just as we reach in air inhalation a higher, finer process, so now in
air exhalation we reach a lower, coarser process. Below we gradually
go from the inner activity of forming carbon dioxide to the process
of digestion. Above, we had to connect air inhalation with that finer
nerve-sense process that becomes a spiritual activity. Below we have
to connect air exhalation with the digestive process, where the human
activity gradually becomes purely physical, becomes altogether a
metabolic activity of the physical body — which is a modified
exhalation. In a certain sense, the activity that exhalation leaves
behind within us is the metabolism. Just as what breathing takes in
of nerve-sense spirit activity becomes inner activity, so what
remains behind of inner activity from exhalation becomes the sum of
forces forming metabolism. The metabolism is active in the element
that in earlier epochs was called earth, the name for everything in
the human organism that tends toward solidity.
(Plate IV)

Plate IVClick image for large view

[It appears Plate IV and VI were mixed up in the original publication of the book ...we have switched them (see date in lower-left of image) – e.Ed]

If we now study the
entire process more closely, we find it has four parts. We have the
process that we have just characterized, of which we can say that
exhalation really goes into the human being. If we look at our
ordinary external inhalation, we see a union of what is inhaled with
what comes down from above. With exhalation, we have to say the
opposite. Exhalation leaves forces behind for metabolism. It does not
take something up; it gives something away. So we have an inner
inhalation as well as an inner exhalation. The union of this inner
inhalation with what the physical body does is the actual metabolic
digestive process.

And now if you look
carefully at this fourfold differentiation, you will see the human
being in a new light, for the following facts also appear:
(Plate IV)
Here is the path of the warmth element coming into the human being
and bringing light, chemism, and life. It connects itself with the
breathing and gives chemism and life to it. But it does not give
light to the breathing. It holds that back. The light stays behind
and floods the human being as inner light, becoming thought
activity.

Also, as inhalation
and exhalation proceed, the macrocosmic chemism is given off and
becomes inner chemism — which is something different from the
chemistry with which we are acquainted in our ordinary laboratory
work. Macrocosmic chemism is introduced into the human being by this
extension of the inner breathing process. So we can say that here
chemism is introduced. Also the life ether goes in and is taken up by
the human being through the interplay of exhalation and
metabolism.

So if we follow the
process from above to below, we have light coming in by way of the
warmth ether, and then coming to a stop. Where the breathing enters,
it comes to a “stop!” for the light. The light spreads
itself out. It is not carried farther by the human organism; it can
spread out as light. We carry within us a pure light organism, a
light organism that thinks.

We follow the process
farther inward to where inhalation borders on exhalation; and we find
the chemism is carried in to that point through the nerve-sense
process. Now the chemism comes to a stop. It is an inner chemism, a
chemical organism in us that feels.

Now let us go down
further to where exhalation leaves the digestive-metabolic process
behind — not the external metabolic process of food
consumption, but the inner metabolic activity. There it is
“stop!” for the life ether. The life ether forms a human
organism that wills. Thus thinking, feeling, and willing come
about.

We can now follow the
entire process as it is reflected in our physical body. Take
everything that is above: within, it manifests as thinking, but
thinking is unsubstantial. Behind it lies all I have described to you
that happens along the nerve paths. They are the external, physical
paths for thinking.

Now go to the next
process. You have this, the uppermost process in the human being,
taken in through the breathing; it manifests in physical reflection
as the arterial circulation. The arterial circulation is the second
kind of path.

Then we come to the
third process, which takes place between exhalation and metabolism.
This also has its own path, the veins. So the third path is the
venous circulation.

Now if we go still
farther into the human being we find the process that provides a path
for itself from below, from outside. It is the process by which the
life ether is taken up. It must provide the life ether for itself
from outside, from below. We find the physical projection of this in
the lymph formation and the lymph system.
(Plate IV)

So now you have the
relation between outer and inner. Very much lies behind the
nerve-sense inhalation. It is an incoming activity, and in what lies
behind it there is much that remains unknown to us. Karma is active
there, karma from the previous earth-life. It is not perceptible, but
it streams in. Karma streams in. If with spiritual vision one
investigates the nerve paths, if one investigates how they are formed
in relation to the senses, one finds on these paths: karma. Karma
streams in. On the other hand, in the lymph formation one does not
only find a physical process: the fact that lymph enters the organism
by the lymph vessels lets one see how lymph goes into the blood and
takes care of us in that way Johannes Müller, the well-known
physiologist,
[Note 10]
has already said, “What is
lymph? Lymph is blood without any red corpuscles. And blood? Blood is
lymph with red corpuscles.” This is, of course, a broad
statement, but it is correct in a certain way. We see in lymph
everything that has not yet become blood; we see in it also the
living-weaving of developing karma. In the lymph process new karma is
forming. The lymph vessels are the beginning of the paths of future karma.
(Plate IV, right side)

So as you approach the
human being from the world of spirit and perceive that macrocosmic
light, chemism, and life are brought on paths of warmth, as you come
from the light to the life paths and see the general cosmic life
flowing in, you perceive more and more the flowing-in of karma which
then becomes active in the human being's earth-life between birth and
death. It works its way in through the nerves; it moves forward
through the modified arterial process, and then is held back, dammed
up in the venous process. When it reaches the venous process it
pushes itself in on mysterious waves. And as we form venous blood we
get this piling-up of karma within us, and then we act from karmic
impulses.

A change in the blood
can merely mean anger. On the other hand, what piles up there because
the past is not allowed down into the venous process leads to actions
that bring about the shaping of karma.

What the lymph does
not allow to go over into the blood gathers deep in the subconscious.
It forms a seed in the subconscious, a seed that we carry out with us
through the gate of death when we throw off our physical body. It is
the karma-to-be, the karma still to be developed.

Above, in the
breathing process one perceives the karma that comes out of the past.
Below the exhalation, in the circulation where the lymph has not yet
become blood, one sees the latent karma. It stays in the lymph. So
one can say
(Plate IV, left, yellow)
that karma flows into the human arterial process and
stays behind; the venous process is formed and karma comes into being
again. We have here the borderline where karma begins to pile up in
the nerve-sense-arterial process.

Below, corresponding
to the process that goes from lymph to veins, we have incoming karma.
When we look with spiritual eyes at the lymph that has not yet become
blood, we see outgoing karma. Thus we have the connection between
physical and spiritual. Above, the human being qualitatively comes
close to the spiritual and touches karma. In between, the present
life is dammed up. Below, in the lymph not yet become blood, we see
the new karma arising, beginning to be formed. Between past karma and
karma that is forming, in between stands the human earth-life, which
— looked at from this point of view — is a damming-up
between the two. Thus we can follow the procedure right into the
physical process.

We will speak further
about this tomorrow. You can realize that we are coming more and more
to see the spiritual working in the physical. Only this will perfect
our practical work.